Pop Culture Blog: Music, Movie and Humor

Leveraging low-hanging synergies outside the vertical fruit box since 1999.

Friday’s Quizzlet: Cocky Corellians are Interesting


in Friday's Quizzlet

Appetizer: On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being highest, how much do you look forward to your birthday?
As you get older, you really stop caring. You start to look forward to not having anyone mark the occasion as much as you used to tearing the paper off a Han Solo figure. Click that link, by the way. I found that in my Grandmother’s closet while cleaning out her house this summer and it’s in pristine condition and worth about $500 on eBay because of the bilingual packaging and the fact that it’s the original 1977 model with the big head before they redid it to look like Harrison Ford. So yeah, birthdays. Don’t really care that much anymore.

Soup: What is one word you don’t like the sound, spelling, or meaning of?
There are three words that have recently made it on to my peeve list, and this is as good a time as any to mention them. The first word isn’t really a word. It’s “Hmmmm…” after you answer a question someone has asked you. As in “Yes, that is how I feel about this political issue, thank you for asking” followed by a “Hmmmm…” from the inquisitor. It’s patronizing, regardless of what the topic of conversation is – and it drives me around the bend. The second word is used in the exact same way and circumstance. “Interesting”. Both are cop outs used by people that think they don’t like what you’ve just told them, and want you to know it, but have no mental ammo to back anything they take issue with up. Fuck off, all of you. The third word that I hate is “passionate”. “What are you passionate about?” What kills me is that people think this is such a cerebral, first date sort of a question. “What are you passionate about?” “Paying the check and getting the hell away from you, you hideous witch.”

Salad: Do you wear sunglasses when you’re outside? If so, what does your current pair look like?
I have a nice pair which I keep in my car, and about 4 other passable, gas-station P.O.S. pairs that I take with me as I’m very prone to losing them. As I’m not currently… Elton John… my sunglasses look like sunglasses.

Main Course: If you were to write a book, to whom would you dedicate it?
Probably my Mother, who has been telling me I was born to be a children’s author for years. I took a stab at developing an idea online a few years ago, and I’m still not sure it’s a bad one. For now it sits neglected on the web amongst the bones of 30 other half-baked ideas. It tends to get a lot of traffic at Halloween, though. Probably by parents trying to scare their kids straight because they think I’m on hard drugs for basing a kids’ character on Frank Sinatra.

Dessert: Name a beverage that you enjoy.
I’m drinking a lot more milk these days. In Canada, they sell milk in bags that you then bring home and plop into a plastic holder with a handle. Then you snip one of the top corners off using a little magnet knife kept stuck to the fridge. Every Canadian household has one, and mine is yellow. It’s cheaper, you get more and I love it. Look at the big bones on Dave, everyone.

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Wednesday Wadio: Magnetic Fields “Love is Like a Bottle of Gin”


in Musical, Wednesday Wadio

69 Love Songs

“It makes you blind, it does you in
It makes you think you’re pretty tough
It makes you prone to crime and sin
It makes you say things off the cuff”

The Magnetic Fields are definitely in my top 10 list of all time favorite bands, and considering my fanatical obsession with music – that’s no small feat. I’m sure Stephen Merritt is reading this right now and crossing himself in relief. It’s hard to encapsulate the Fields, or any of Merritt’s many incarnations for that matter, in one song – so I decided not to try. Love is Like a Bottle of Gin is a favorite of mine, but due to it’s slow tempo and short length a record company executive would definitely never choose it as the first track to play the uninitiated. Luckily I don’t think the Magnetic Fields have ever made a proper music video, so I was happy to settle for this fan-made clip that sets the gloomy and brilliant tune to scenes from the Britcom Black Books. I’m not entirely sure why, but beggars…

“It’s very small and made of glass
and grossly over-advertised
It turns a genius into an ass
and makes a fool think he is wise”

The man behind the Fields and several other bands (the Gothic Archies, the 6ths, etc.) is an absolute musical genius. In addition to his prolific output under multiple band names, he has also scored all of the massively popular Lemony Snicket audio books and movies, released the astounding 69 Love Songs (from which this song is taken) a 3 CD collection of tunes he and the Fields-of-the-moment wrote and recorded in one studio session back in 1999 and is as revered in the deep alternative scene as you can get. I’ll provide some links towards the end of the post where you can branch out and learn more for yourselves, and I sincerely hope you do. You may remember the incredibly catchy song from the Southern Comfort ads of a few years ago. The old folks dance around to it, assumably while getting cocked on the only adult libation which still makes me gag due to one particular night of early-teens indiscretion. Strange Powers is as good a place to start as any and I might have featured it had it been up on YouTube.

“It could make you regret your birth
or turn cartwheels in your best suit
It costs a lot more than it’s worth
and yet there is no substitute”

LILABOG, however, is an incredible song in its own right. From the unique time signature, to the distorted and spooky guitar sound to the lyrics’ uncanny ability to draw parallels between how love can make you act just as stupid as downing too much strong, cheap liquor. I think learning these words should be part of gym class or sex ed in high school as it covers a lot of important bases simultaneously. Namely – stay away from both entities until you are much, much more cynical and jaded.

69 Love Songs

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Congratulations Amy and Chris!


in Heartwarming

Two dear friends of mine got married this past Saturday, and I’ve just completed a wedding gallery of the extremely fun day. I flew down from Ottawa last Wednesday and extended the trip beyond the weekend in order to visit friends and get in some office time – but it was really all about the weddin’. The way the ceremony and reception were organized really stood out in my mind, as the whole day seemed planned in the interests of making it ‘low-impact’ for the guests. Semi-formal, private home, shuttle back to the hotel, great room rate – and the ceremony itself lasted barely 15 minutes. The elegant simplicity of things in no way diminished any traditions – it was easily the most emotionally charged wedding I’ve ever been to.

We love ya, kids. Here’s to a great life together, and I hope you’re currently ruining bedsprings all over Martha’s Vineyard. Enjoy yourself, Chrissy. We have a lot of work to do when you get back.

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Recent Nerdery Admissions


in Movies

I spent quite a bit of time over the summer building and maintaining a Squidoo lens devoted to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I checked it for the first time in a week or so and it’s been as high as #2 in their Movies section, and broke the top 50 network wide. Considering there are now over 100,000 Squidoo lenses – that’s not too damn shabby. If you haven’t looked at it yet, please take a gander.

I also paid a designer to re-imagine my silly dog sweater site. I have updated it once or month or so since then redesign and traffic has gone through the roof. One day last week, the Google ads at the top of the main page got over 100 clicks! My point is, you never know when something you’ve created might hit a tipping point. The best example was two years ago when live cockroach brooches were featured on America’s Top Model and my uber-silly celebrity blog spoof ended up getting 5 thousand hits the next day. The same thing happened more recently when the little buggers were used as a plot device on CSI: New York and again the search engine traffic blew up temporarily.

You can slave away mercilessly on an idea for years and never hit the sort of perfect traffic storm that comes from something – an article, a top 10 list, a photo – going viral. Chris Crocker I’m not. But that’s obviousvly a very good problem to have.

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